Digital information can be conveyed over any medium capable of carrying an electromagnetic radio wave signal. Thus, a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum may be used for wireless data communications between electronic devices. Radio frequencies falling in the range of approximately 3 kHz to 300 GHz are commonly used for communication and ranging, and the transmission equipment and methods employed in wireless data communication (WDC) varies widely. An important subcategory of wireless data communication network is the wireless sensor networks (WSN), in which a plurality of autonomous sensors is arrayed such that each sensor becomes a node in a network, separated by some distance in space. This type of distributed data network is suitable for applications that utilize data from multiple sources for which a hard-wired solution would be impractical or impossible. A wireless sensor network can be instrumental in controlling and tracking inventories of physical objects, monitoring geological or meteorological events, and accumulating individual and/or population data from a group of persons, such as patients in a hospital. There are many established standards and protocols available for wireless data communication networks, each with their distinct advantages and limitations. One well-known approach is the ALOHA protocol, in which each node in the network transmits any time it has data to send. This is a relatively uncomplicated method to implement, as each node operates on a set of very basic instructions. However, the ALOHA protocol makes no provision for the collision of simultaneously broadcast signals within a given channel, therefore, each node in the ALOHA network can conceivably start transmitting at any time, resulting in jamming and loss of information. As such, ALOHA cannot use 100% of the capacity of the available channels and is known to be highly inefficient. A wireless data communications network implementing a pure ALOHA protocol can only use approximately 20% of its operating time for successful transmission of data. Other methods of wireless data communications have been developed that improve on this in efficiency, but the challenge of achieving optimal throughput of data is typically made more difficult as network traffic load increases.
Accordingly, there is a need for a more efficient system and method of wireless data communication that is able to utilize more channel capacity and preserve the fidelity of the data signals being transmitted, all while optimizing the power being used by each node of the network. Such a system would dramatically improve the efficiency and power consumption in wireless networks in general, and particularly in wireless sensor networks in which a plurality of nodes may be joining and leaving the network at any point during its operating time.